Affirmative Action NO, Affirmative Learning YES

I think it is about time the “Affirmative Action” issue is addressed squarely right here and right now.

The people of Michigan voted to abolish affirmative action for college admission in this state.

(Reuters) – A Michigan law that bans affirmative action in public college admissions violates the Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, adding to a growing debate on preferential treatment for minorities.

A sharply divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati found that a 2006 amendment to the Michigan Constitution imposed burdens on racial minorities in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. (Chicage Tribune, November 15, 2012)

For once the current Michigan Attorney General is on the right side when he vowed to take the issue all the way to the Supreme Court in a statement I heard on the radio this past week.

Minorities DO NOT need preferential treatment. Black students especially. Giving such students preferential treatment does them a great disservice.

Students who are given “points” in the admissions process because they are black so they qualify for college entrance places them in college, but it does not give them the background and skills needed to succeed in college.

Many, if not most, such students drop out. The money they spent to attend college, while not entirely wasted (supposing they might have learned something even if they did not pass courses successfully), did not or will not get them to their intended goal.

Preferential treatment sends the wrong message to high school students, and even students in grades before that. Students of color think they are “owed” an education because of slavery which ended more than a century and a half ago. So, in class in high school, where I taught, students did not exert their fullest effort.

Administrators made it clear to teachers that if the teacher failed too many pupils, the teacher would be reprimanded, and ultimately rated unsatisfactory. Science teachers and mathematics teachers were quite flustered by such administrative decisions.

Administrators argued, “If the student did not learn, the teacher did not teach.” Nonsense. Administrators who make such claims are out of their minds and have no business in the field of education.

The teachers cannot make up for lost learning when they receive students in the ninth grade or tenth grade who read at the third or fourth grade level. Often, the best of the twelfth grade students read at the eighth grade level.

AND THE COURT IS STUPID ENOUGH to favor this situation? Judges and attorneys need to wake up. It may be they could learn how to solve the achievement gap and help students to be genuinely prepared for college if they carefully studied my course goals and lesson plans and associated assignments that I have posted at www.readingsteps.com, but of course they are not interested.

Nevertheless, coaches at the high school where I taught informed me that 21 of their athletes qualified for full athletic scholarships to college as a result of the tutoring I voluntarily gave them.

Students need careful moral direction. If you don’t think so, you have not been reading the news. Notice in recent news the moral failures that have been prominent nationally. On a smaller scale of course, I saw those problems with the students I taught. To solve the problem, I made use of daily proverbs and quotations. I had students write “Proverb Interpretation” and “Proverb Application” compositions weekly. Some of my students told me they appreciated the assignments I gave them, and told me the assignments had changed their lives.

One set of those proverbs is also posted at the www.readingsteps.com site.

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